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Financial situation of the Matrix.org Foundation

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Re: Financial situation of the Matrix.org Foundation

#51

Post by alohapersona3 »

feanaro wrote: post #40
alohapersona3 wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If next there is "Synapse Pro" that is proprietary and sold by Element and includes features not present in the open source version of Synapse but relevant to company or government use of Matrix, the AGPL-only version of Synapse will lack those features. This will hinder companies that (potentially) require "Synapse Pro"-features from contributing to the AGPL-only version of Synapse. We have seen this happen before.

This situation is no different than it was when Synapse was licensed under Apache, though.

Not entirely. Under the Apache license, everyone can contribute to the Apache-licensed code and mix that code with proprietary code as they wish. Under AGPL-only that's not possible, only code that was contributed under Element's CLA can be relicensed by them and then mixed with the proprietary code. That makes contributing code under AGPL-only less attractive if you need to use the proprietary code.

Re: Financial situation of the Matrix.org Foundation

#52

Post by alohapersona3 »

eredengrin wrote: post #49
alohapersona3 wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why would it be relevant, who I am? I am interested in the future of Matrix as an open, decentralized protocol. I increasingly see a risk in the behavior of New Vector as the VC-funded effective owner of the Matrix protocol. To me, the Matrix.org Foundation was supposed to be the organization that saves the community from the interests of VCs. Over recent years I got the feeling the foundation became mostly a fake no…

> For Matrix to be a success, we need to design it such that there can be contributions from others than New Vector. What exactly do you think is stopping such contributions? It seems to me there is plenty of room for community involvement, it is simply a matter of the community doing it (which many have been of course, but there is also always more work to do and free skilled labor is not easy to come by in large qu…

> What exactly do you think is stopping such contributions?

2/5 foundation board members are from New Vector. At least another 2/5 foundation board members have strong personal ties with New Vector. 7/8 spec team members are from New Vector. In other words: Nothing at the Matrix Foundation happens without consent from New Vector. If New Vector does not like a competitor, they can block them from participating in the standard (making new features of them standards non-compliant) and then block them from using the Matrix brand or claiming to be Matrix compatible. As a company, you'd be stupid to build your business around being a competitor to New Vector if they can easily throw you out.

That was the whole purpose of the foundation: to manage the spec and the brand independent of New Vector, so that others can contribute.

> I'm not following. How does the foundation having money reduce this risk?

It's much easier to do anything with money. If new structures need to be created in the foundation after a collapse of New Vector, it is way easier to do so if you have money.

> It would change things if they were bringing in millions, but when the community patreon is not even bringing in enough to hire a full time minimum wage employee in California, much less a developer, accountant, or lawyer, documenting the expenditure of a few pennies is pretty low on my priority list.

As I wrote in the linked thread, their total assets exceeded a million dollars end of 2021. That should be enough for a full-time hire with competitive compensation for a few years, especially if that hire is not in California (why the hack hire in California when you don't need to?). Also, even small amounts of money can be very attractive to open source contributors, they're already doing it without any compensation, but just giving them a thousand bucks a month will make them more likely to continue contributing in their spare time. You don't need it to be a full time hire to be effective.

Re: Financial situation of the Matrix.org Foundation

#53

Post by KomoD »

EarlKing wrote: post #48
KomoD wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This is not something that applies just to Matrix FYI The Matrix foundation is not a 501(c)(3), it's not even registered in the US.

A quick search turned up a registration for them in the UK? Is this them?[1] And if so..... where is any of this even documented on the matrix.org website? Lastly, use of a CIC is a horrible idea for precisely the sort of shady shit we're seeing here. [1] https://find-and-update.company-information.service.gov.uk/c...

That is them, yes. On the "About" page under "Legal Details".

Re: Financial situation of the Matrix.org Foundation

#54

Post by Arathorn »

alohapersona3 wrote: post #52
eredengrin wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> For Matrix to be a success, we need to design it such that there can be contributions from others than New Vector. What exactly do you think is stopping such contributions? It seems to me there is plenty of room for community involvement, it is simply a matter of the community doing it (which many have been of course, but there is also always more work to do and free skilled labor is not easy to come by in large qu…

> What exactly do you think is stopping such contributions? 2/5 foundation board members are from New Vector. At least another 2/5 foundation board members have strong personal ties with New Vector. 7/8 spec team members are from New Vector. In other words: Nothing at the Matrix Foundation happens without consent from New Vector. If New Vector does not like a competitor, they can block them from participating in the…

> At least another 2/5 foundation board members have strong personal ties with New Vector

Nope. Neither Ross, Jon or Jutta have 'strong personal ties' with NV. We had met Ross twice(?) before asking him to join (based on his qualifications as a decentralisation-focused lawyer and casual Matrix user). Jutta we'd met once (and was asked based on her qualifications as CEO of a decentralisation-focused company which used Matrix). Jon had supervised me on an undergrad project 20 years ago (and not been in contact since), and was asked to join on the basis of his qualifications as an academic expert in decentralisation. We recruited experts to the board who we were familiar with from the industry, and have asked them to put their professional reputation on the line to ensure that Amandine & myself (as founders of Matrix, and later Element) keep the foundation on mission.

> 7/8 spec team members are from New Vector.

This is only because 3 of the 8 were independent when they joined the team, but subsequently ended up working at NV so they could be paid to work on the Matrix core team as their day job. When performing their SCT duties they do so as independent individuals rather than Element employees, and do a great job of separating the two.

> If New Vector does not like a competitor, they can block them from participating in the standard (making new features of them standards non-compliant) and then block them from using the Matrix brand or claiming to be Matrix compatible.

If that happened, the Guardians (and in future the Governing Board) would step in to fix the abuse. It's a checks & balances system.

> That should be enough for a full-time hire with competitive compensation for a few years, especially if that hire is not in California (why the hack hire in California when you don't need to?)

I am very glad that the Foundation hired a world-class Managing Director in the form of Josh, precisely to address the issues you've been highlighting, with a pretty much unique history and qualifications for managing non-profit open source foundations. That's why the hack we hired in California :)

Re: Financial situation of the Matrix.org Foundation

#55

Post by Arathorn »

tentacleuno wrote: post #45
Arathorn wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The Graphene guy posted it on Twitter, and by doing so you claimed he "slagged [you] off"[0]. I forget the precise contents of their deleted tweets, and I'd be first to admit that for better or worse I try to be authentic when typing here or elsewhere, rather than faking being calm & anodyne. Based on the feedback here & elsewhere, that's probably a mistake. In this instance, having Graphene screaming about how awf…

> In this instance, having Graphene screaming about how awful Matrix is and enumerating ways to cause moderation problems was not helpful during a moderation incident, especially where we had been scrambling to help them. To be fair, from what I hear GrapheneOS doesn't have the best reputation for its communication with other people, but strcat did appear rather apologetic in the thread. Regardless, we're experiencin…

> Hmm, this is where I disagree -- if you've been scrambling to help, wouldn't the issue have been fixed by now?

We scrambled to investigate and fix this particular instance (and previous unrelated instances where they'd had problems). When we realised that they were simultaneously screaming about how shit we were, we put it back on the shelf.

Re: Financial situation of the Matrix.org Foundation

#56

Post by Jasper_ »

Arathorn wrote: post #55
tentacleuno wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> In this instance, having Graphene screaming about how awful Matrix is and enumerating ways to cause moderation problems was not helpful during a moderation incident, especially where we had been scrambling to help them. To be fair, from what I hear GrapheneOS doesn't have the best reputation for its communication with other people, but strcat did appear rather apologetic in the thread. Regardless, we're experiencin…

> Hmm, this is where I disagree -- if you've been scrambling to help, wouldn't the issue have been fixed by now? We scrambled to investigate and fix this particular instance (and previous unrelated instances where they'd had problems). When we realised that they were simultaneously screaming about how shit we were, we put it back on the shelf.

I mean, it's still happening to them, one whole year later. To be completely honest, are you unable to recognize that from their perspective, you are shit, because they're having serious issues with your product, and you stopped helping them because... they tried to tell their users that getting dropped from the chatroom is Matrix's fault, not theirs? Can you not see how completely unacceptable it is for thousands of people to be randomly dropped from rooms?

Fixing fundamental basic functionality of your app should not be classified as having "burnt a bunch of time investigating this".

Re: Financial situation of the Matrix.org Foundation

#57

Post by jMyles »

dang wrote: post #31

" Please use the original title, unless it is misleading or linkbait; don't editorialize. " - https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html If you want to say what you think is important about an article, that's fine, but do it by adding a comment to the thread. Then your view will be on a level playing field with everyone else's: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&so... (Submitted title was…

The issue is several years old, but the comments that are new - and of interest - are those that assert the statement int he submitted title.

Without taking a position on the underlying issue (I'm broadly pro-matrix), I wonder: is it worth considering whether this is a scenario worth an addition carve-out of the "original title" rule?

Re: Financial situation of the Matrix.org Foundation

#58

Post by dang »

jMyles wrote: post #57
dang wrote: post #31

" Please use the original title, unless it is misleading or linkbait; don't editorialize. " - https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html If you want to say what you think is important about an article, that's fine, but do it by adding a comment to the thread. Then your view will be on a level playing field with everyone else's: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&so... (Submitted title was…

The issue is several years old, but the comments that are new - and of interest - are those that assert the statement int he submitted title. Without taking a position on the underlying issue (I'm broadly pro-matrix), I wonder: is it worth considering whether this is a scenario worth an addition carve-out of the "original title" rule?

Possibly - but then if the story is significant there will surely be an article or post or report about it someplace that can be linked to.

I agree that none of those rules are 100% crisp and there's room for smudginess.

Re: Financial situation of the Matrix.org Foundation

#59

Post by feanaro »

alohapersona3 wrote: post #51
feanaro wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This situation is no different than it was when Synapse was licensed under Apache, though.

Not entirely. Under the Apache license, everyone can contribute to the Apache-licensed code and mix that code with proprietary code as they wish. Under AGPL-only that's not possible, only code that was contributed under Element's CLA can be relicensed by them and then mixed with the proprietary code. That makes contributing code under AGPL-only less attractive if you need to use the proprietary code.

Well definitely, but as a net benefit, we'll have less proprietary Matrix code than before. Or the people needing to use Synapse in a proprietary setting can contact Element for a proprietary licence, in which case Element will be able to pay its salaries and keep developing Matrix. It really seems like a net win, except for the people that were planning to build proprietary services on top of Synapse without contributing back.

Re: Financial situation of the Matrix.org Foundation

#60

Post by solarkraft »

Arathorn wrote: post #54
alohapersona3 wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> What exactly do you think is stopping such contributions? 2/5 foundation board members are from New Vector. At least another 2/5 foundation board members have strong personal ties with New Vector. 7/8 spec team members are from New Vector. In other words: Nothing at the Matrix Foundation happens without consent from New Vector. If New Vector does not like a competitor, they can block them from participating in the…

> At least another 2/5 foundation board members have strong personal ties with New Vector Nope. Neither Ross, Jon or Jutta have 'strong personal ties' with NV. We had met Ross twice(?) before asking him to join (based on his qualifications as a decentralisation-focused lawyer and casual Matrix user). Jutta we'd met once (and was asked based on her qualifications as CEO of a decentralisation-focused company which used…

Thank you for this response! If you're "faking being calm & anodyne" here, I think it's working and benefiting the response's quality.
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